Gobbels, gobbels...
Front page of today's Straits Times
Roti prata set up
Mama's cool wee Jimny
The local 'eating house'.
The weird thing about the Straits Times is that it has such a tightly constructed narrative need. The proof of its propagandising mode is that it uses externally written articles for one purpose and one purpose alone - to justify its views on the correctness of Singapore. Foreign articles either (a) denigrate the rest of the world, saying how good it is that we live here or (b) say what great place Singapore is and how the rest of the world should be like it. Why does it do this? Because it is what it is, it never contributes to intelligent debate. It merely amplifies the government's point of view. If Lee Hsein Loong says that it's a good idea to learn Malay, they say, it's a great idea to learn Malay. If he says it's a good idea that people should only take their annuities when they are 85, the say it's the best thing since sliced bread. And then slews of column inches then appear showing how people who work longer and harder lead happier lives and how people who have retired early suffer from Alzheimers and die poor in mental institutions. It really is that bad, i kid you not. I desperately miss good publications as well. There is no equivalent of the Ecologist or Nature or anything vaguely political here. I went to the magazine specialist yesterday and saw more publications on cars than i could shake a stick at, but nothing on politics. Not even Newsweek. Not that i would deign to buy Newsweek, of course. I miss the Sunday papers with their varying views. Even the lunatic Telegraph. The raging Times. Even them. Even the Sunday World has more political articles than the ST. What did the front page of our papers have today? Why mooncakes are getting more expensive. Sumiko Tan on Why a woman needs a man. How the police STAR team arrested and apprehended the NS man who had gone AWOL with the assault rifle. What else? Something by Janadas Devan, which you can expect would be both patronising, pompous and pretelligentious. Also the style of writing is weird. It's not newspaper copy as we know it any longer. Reporters think that their short story experts now. They begin articles with "He was five minutes from death." If i wanted to read Readers' Digest i would have bought a copy of Readers' Digest. For this reason alone, i find the New Paper more honest. The New Paper is the only tabloid in Singapore. It is refreshingly post modern in the sense that it has no pretentions, and therefore, it has depictions of life in Singapore ring far truer than ST's. I know you ask, why don't i read another newspaper. Because there IS no other newspaper in Singapore. It's true. There isn't. There isn't a website either.
...
We had breakfast at the market today. I had avoided town yesterday and it was the right thing to do. The CTE had what is known as a 'Massive Jam' on it - these electronic signs tell you the state the expressway is in - and they had to take the long way round. After spending so much of time on the road, staring at the rear end of cars, i've decided that i'm not going to leave Serangoon Gatrdens anymore. We shall spend all our time here now, eating, swimming, shopping and socialising. I have had enough. Even today when my dad suggested we go to have breakfast somewhere, i said, the market - and he said, which market, i said the one here because i'm not going through the stress of the traffic any longer.
...
The neighbour called in. It turns out that she knows lots of my female friends from RJC. Serena, Deena and then she also knows Andrew because she works with him in MFA. It also turns out that some of them will all be working closely with each other. On this thing called the ASEAN charter. I have no notion about what this charter entails. The mind boggles...
